Cézanne does not register at the law school. He wants
to go to Paris to
learn to paint. This plan is thwarted
by Gibert, his drawing teacher, who opposes his departure.

May

Cézanne’s father stipulates that the trip to
Paris will be contingent upon his continuing to study law.

May 28

In the military draft lottery on February 24 Cézanne
comes up no. 49; the medical examiners declare him "fit
for service," but he is released from obligations.
Military archives list his profession as "law
student."

June–July

He becomes deeply discouraged. Zola chides
him for his passivity and encourages him to devote himself
to painting.

October

Zola plans to establish an "artistic
society" in Paris with Cézanne, Baille, and
Georges Pajot, a fellow student, in order "to form
a powerful union for the future, to provide mutual support,
whatever positions might await us." The census indicates
that Cézanne is still living with his family
in Aix-en-Provence. He is registered
as a legal clerk.

1861

April–July

Cézanne in Paris. Despite the continuing disapproval
of Gibert, his teacher
at the drawing school, Cézanne leaves Aix for Paris
in April and remains
there until September. Louis-Auguste Cézanne accompanies
his son to Paris, where he remains for a time. Cézanne
meets Camille Pissarro.

September

Probably after failing to qualify for
a place at the École des Beaux-Arts,
Cézanne returns to Aix, where he works in his father’s
bank. Zola writes:

"Cézanne, the banker, can’t
see;
without a quake
The birth of a future painter at the
back of his bank"

Cézanne registers once more at the drawing school
in Aix, where he draws after the live model.

summer

He works in the Aix countryside with his childhood friend, Numa Coste, who "accompanies
[him] every morning to the landscape and
saturates him with a thousand affronts of various kinds
that he multiplies every minute." He begins a painting
depicting a view of the dam built by Zola’s
father.

early November 1862–June 1863

Cézanne returns to Paris, where
his father comes to visit him on
January 13, 1864.

Cézanne is in Paris. His first known
letter to Pissarro, dated March 15.

winter

Cézanne is in Aix. In the postscript to
a letter from Antoine-Fortuné Marion to Heinrich
Morstatt, a musician passionately fond of Wagner, he invites
Morstatt, who is in Marseille, to come to Aix and play Wagner
over the Christmas holidays.

1866

mid-February

Cézanne leaves Aix for Paris.

mid-August

Cézanne is back in Aix. He takes
walks in the countryside with Marion and their friend
Antony Valabrègue.
A poem dedicated to Paul Cézanne
appears in L’Écho des Bouches-du-Rhone, an
Aix newspaper. During the month of August he works on the
first version of a painting inspired
by Wagner, Young Girl at the Piano: Overture to "Tannhäuser" (present
location unknown).

mid-October

Cézanne works
on a portrait of his sister Rose, and on some landscapes,
despite rainy weather, although "all pictures done
inside, in the studio, will never be as good as things
done in the open air." At the invitation of his former teacher Gibert, he and
his friends Baille, Marion, and Valabrègue visit
the collection of old masters recently bequeathed to the
Musée d’Aix.

October 23

Cézanne is in conflict with his family, "the
nastiest people in the world, and
irritating beyond measure."

November 2

The painter Antoine Guillemet describes Cézanne in very positive terms: "His
physique has become rather more handsome, his hair is long,
his figure exudes health, and his very dress causes a sensation
on the Cours [Mirabeau]." The inhabitants of Aix begin
to show interest in Cézanne’s painting, and
Guillemet predicts a
future "in which he’ll be offered the
directorship of the museum."

1867

February–end of May

Cézanne is in Paris and "dreams of
immense paintings."

early June

Cézanne, who has spent a portion of the winter and
spring in Paris, returns to Aix with his mother, who had
probably come to visit the Exposition Universelle (World's Fair). He
works on "some truly beautiful portraits; no longer
[executed] with the palette knife, but just
as vigorous." He hopes to return to Paris for a week
in mid-August to
view once more the private Manet and
Courbet exhibitions in the company
of Marion. In the end, the plan does not work out, and
Marion goes to Paris alone. Cézanne
works on some large canvases. He begins a second version
of Young Girl at the Piano: Overture to "Tannhäuser" in
a lighter palette.

1868

January 26

Cézanne attends a concert in Paris, where he
hears the overtures to Wagner's operas The Flying Dutchman (January 26)
and Tannhäuser (February 23) as well as the prelude
to Lohengrin (April 19).

February–May

Cézanne is in Paris.

May 16

Cézanne leaves Paris for Aix.

June and early July

Cézanne takes an excursion to Saint-Antonin, a small
village at the foot of Montagne Sainte-Victoire. Otherwise
he leads a solitary life with his family, occasionally venturing
into a café and gleaning "insignificant news" from
Le Siècle, a Parisian newspaper.

November

Cézanne works on a landscape on
the banks of the River Arc for the next Salon.

around December 15

Cézanne returns to Paris.

1869

At the beginning of the year, in Paris, Cézanne meets
Emélie Hortense Fiquet, who becomes his companion.

April

Cézanne is in L’Estaque, where he paints a
watercolor, Factories in L’Estaque.